What do you dudes and dudettes think about the following schools? You can comment on how you feel about their programs, their location, their professors, or personal bias! If you're very motivated, you could even give me YOUR definitive ranking.

University of RochesterStony Brook UniversityUniversity of WashingtonCarnegie MellonBoston University

I don't know much about the field, but I'd guess that Washingon and Stony Brook go first because they appear to have more faculty working in the area. Also, Stony Brook runs Brookhaven National Lab, right? Having some big particle accelerators a few miles away would probably be helpful for you.

I'm in the high energy theory department, but in most cases there's a pretty strong correlation between rankings of theory and experiment for the school. I did do a lot of research in applying to those schools (applied to BU, Stony Brook, and UMass-Amherst myself, only accepted to the last one), so here's my take.

1. Stony Brook - Particle and nuclear experiment is what they do best, considering they operate the Brookhaven national lab. There's also a lot of other stuff going on with ATLAS and Super-Kamiokande.2. University of Washington - They're program is freaking tremendous. More physics faculty than I've seen at pretty much any other institution. Probably ranked higher than SB in overall physics department, but they're just about tied (if slightly under it) in high energy experiment. They've also got a lot at CERN (ATLAS, ALEPH detector) and Fermilab (D0).3. University of Rochester - UR isn't as highly ranked in physics as most of these others, but AMO and particle experiment are definitely their thing (this is one case in which they're so so at theory, but insanely good at experiment). It's really a tie between them and BU in this field, I think.4. Boston University - Great above average sized department. Theory kicks it's butt since they've got Shelly Glashow, but they're no slouch. They had a big hand in discovering the top quark in D0 and are taking a major effort in ATLAS developing algorithms to find that mischievous Higgs boson.5. Carnegie Mellon - Great school, but not as well known for experimental high energy. Pretty small department.

Hope I helped a tad. I think you really couldn't go wrong with any of the top 4. They're so close that deciding between 1 and 2 or 3 and 4 is really going to be a subjective opinion.